Following Great Britain’s Lead

By Ed Hoffman

Last week, I opened my radio show with the song “We’re Not Gonna Take It” from The Who’s musical “Tommy” and explained that it was apropos because that’s what the British citizens said to the European Union on June 23. Brexit is significant because it signals that a nation has had enough. Great Britain is ready to be a separate, sovereign country again with its own borders.

Even here in the United States, every one of the 48 contiguous states has a border and we have to go through a quick check of some sort when crossing – but in the European Union, people have license to travel freely and without consequence throughout 28 different countries. You know who that’s great for? Terrorists.

But even aside from the terrorism angle, the EU has robbed Great Britain of its way of life. England’s recorded history dates back to the 1100s; that 1,000 years of tradition and history has been slowly stripped away over the past 23 years since the European Union was established. And in the past 10 years, “slowly” has sped up quite a bit as Islamic-born immigrants have flooded into the country. Last year, the UK Daily Mail reported that Mohammed was the most popular boys’ name in England and Wales for 2015. It also exposed the UK’s Office of National Statistics’ cover-up of that fact. Apparently, the UK government agency left the name off its baby names list because the different “spelling variations” of Mohammed threw off the data. But the Daily Mail knew better, and good for them.

I said it on my show before it was being widely reported as the reason for the Brexit victory: Non-assimilating Muslims are taking over Europe one country at a time. I was talking to someone who went to Paris recently. There are neighborhoods there that are Muslim-only – no outsiders welcome. Do you think Christian or Jewish Europeans get away with that? No way.

And then, there’s the matter of the EU deciding how Great Britain does business. Companies like Cadbury, Ford Transit, Jaguar, Land Rover and Texas Instruments have all been forced to move their European divisions out of the UK at the behest of courts that aren’t even in the UK. The European Union moves Britain’s jobs around, and Britain has no say.

So Britain finally said, “Enough.”

It reminds me of a scene from the movie “Moneyball.” Boston Red Sox owner John Henry is explaining to Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane that people act threatened when change happens because, “Really what it’s threatening is their livelihoods, threatening their jobs, threating the way that they do things. Anytime that happens – whether that’s a government or a way of doing business or whatever it is – the people who are holding the reigns, who have their hand on the switch, they go crazy.” And that’s exactly what the people of Great Britain did last week. They realized they had their hand on the switch, and they turned it off. As Leave Vote campaign co-founder Nigel Farage said on Monday, the UK was fed up with “70% of our laws being made by foreign institutions, our own Supreme Court being overruled by Luxembourg, and having an open border to 500 million people. What we did last Thursday was say, ‘We want our country back.’.”

Maybe it’s time for the United States to do the same.

Ed Hoffman is host of The Main Event on AM590, which airs Saturday 9:30 AM – 10:30 AM and Sunday 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM. Follow him on Twitter @EdHoffman, and like him on Facebook by searching The Main Event 590.